Criminal charges against Ashlyn Watkins were dropped Nov. 1. according to court records. 

The South Carolina basketball star was arrested in late August on assault and battery and kidnapping charges.

Shortly after the arrest, Watkins learned she was suspended from the team. The junior from Columbia, South Carolina, was allowed to continue attending classes.

The University of South Carolina released a statement Wednesday confirming the forward was back at practice. 

“With the dismissal of the legal charges, South Carolina junior forward Ashlyn Watkins has returned to team activities beginning with practice today,” the statement said.

Watkins had not worked out with the team and was not among the group that traveled to Washington, D.C., for a White House visit in September to commemorate its national championship last season. 

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She was also not with the top-ranked Gamecocks Monday night as they defeated Michigan 68-62 in Las Vegas to open the season.

South Carolina forward Ashlyn Watkins brings the ball up against Arkansas during the second half of a game Feb. 29, 2024, in Fayetteville, Ark.  (AP Photo/Michael Woods, File)

Watkins led the Southeastern Conference with 91 blocks last season and has recorded the only two dunks in program history, one as a freshman and one as a sophomore.

South Carolina Gamecocks forward Ashlyn Watkins (2) and N.C. State Wolfpack forward Mimi Collins (2) fight for a loose ball in the semifinals of the 2024 NCAA Tournament at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland April 5, 2024. (Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports)

Watkins is expected to take over in the post for Kamilla Cardoso, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder last season. Cardoso was a first-round WNBA draft pick by the Chicago Sky.

South Carolina takes on N.C. State Sunday in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The Dodgers’ other big need this offseason, Gomes confirmed Wednesday, is starting pitching.

And while the free-agent market is rich with veteran talent, the team is monitoring star Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki, too.

A 23-year-old right-hander with a triple-digit fastball and career 2.02 ERA in his native country’s Nippon Professional Baseball league, it’s uncertain if Sasaki will be posted for MLB clubs to sign this offseason. But if he is, he will come as a bargain, since league rules for international free agents under the age of 25 would restrict him to signing only a minor league contract with a modest signing bonus (similar to when Shohei Ohtani, then also 23, signed with the Angels for $2.3 million in 2017).

Sasaki, whom Gomes declined to discuss Wednesday since he is still under club control in Japan, has been long coveted by the Dodgers and heavily scouted by their executives in recent years.

And with the Dodgers considered favorites to sign him if he does come to MLB this winter, he could represent the front office’s dream acquisition: A young, gifted, cost-controlled pitcher to bolster a starting rotation beset by injuries in recent years.

The Dodgers, of course, will have other avenues if Sasaki doesn’t become their latest Japanese acquisition.

Two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell would be the most obvious name for the Dodgers to pursue. Last spring, the team made a late play for the left-hander before he signed with the San Francisco Giants. And even though the soon-to-be 32-year-old is expected to fetch the kind of nine-figure contract that eluded him last offseason, his track record of durable success (he is top 15 in the majors in both ERA and starts since 2017) should make him a priority target for the Dodgers again this winter.

If not Snell, the Dodgers could pivot to other big names.

Corbin Burnes is a former Cy Young winner whom the Dodgers had trade interest in last year, though is projected to command even more money than Snell, which might price him out of the Dodgers’ plans.

Max Fried is a Harvard-Westlake product who has a career 3.25 ERA, but also battled forearm injuries the last two seasons, something the Dodgers will have to weigh given the other health-related question marks already populating their pitching staff.

The next tier of free-agent starters includes Jack Flaherty (the Dodgers’ key trade deadline acquisition this past year), Nathan Eovaldi (a veteran the Dodgers were monitoring at the trade deadline before trading for Flaherty), Yusei Kikuchi, Sean Manaea and Luis Severino.

And then there’s Walker Buehler, whom the Dodgers remain interested in re-signing even after declining to extend him a one-year, $21-million qualifying offer this week.

The Dodgers could be open to still paying Buehler something in that ballpark, depending on how the rest of his market develops. And Gomes emphasized that Buehler’s contributions in the postseason, including closing out Game 5 of the World Series on one day of rest, “does not go lost on us.”

At the same time, however, it’s possible Buehler could fetch proposals beyond what the Dodgers are willing to match, especially since he is not encumbered by the qualifying offer (which, if he had declined, would have required other teams to forfeit draft compensation to sign him).

Like most things this time of year, the Dodgers remain in wait-and-see mode for now.

After Manchester City’s 4-1 defeat to Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League on Tuesday evening, Bernardo Silva said that his side were “in a dark place”, although Pep Guardiola did not agree.

The City boss pointed out that his side had played very well for the most part, as they did when exiting the Carabao Cup at Tottenham last week. Guardiola is not blind to City’s issues, though, admitting that they were not good enough in defeat at Bournemouth at the weekend and that they struggled to contain Sporting’s counter-attacks.

Guardiola has been largely satisfied with his side’s efforts in recent matches. Where some saw narrow victories against Fulham, Wolves and Southampton as fortunate, the City manager has been pleased with their fight and desire to get the job done.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that, over the past week, City have lost three times. Add to that the manner of Tuesday’s defeat, plus Bernardo’s comment and there’s a hint of crisis about the club right now. So here’s an inquest into just what has been going wrong.

The injuries

The obvious place to start is the injuries.

Ballon D’Or winner Rodri is the biggest and most obvious loss, compounded by fellow midfielder Kevin De Bruyne missing almost two months. Various other players have dropped out recently, including Ruben Dias, Jack Grealish and Jeremy Doku. The biggest problems flow from there, although in the wake of the Sporting defeat, there have been complaints among supporters about the club’s recruitment — or lack thereof — over the past two years.

(Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

Whatever the rights and wrongs of City’s approach to the transfer market, they have been hit with a significant number of injuries at the same time and that has had an obvious knock-on effect.

Combined with the fact that others, like Ilkay Gundogan and Phil Foden (who is improving week by week), have not been playing at their peak level, it is perhaps no surprise that some of the team’s recent performances, even when victorious, have looked a little underwhelming.

A soft centre

Guardiola’s answer when he spots a weakness in his team, not least when Rodri is not available, is to fill the midfield with ball players and instruct them to make as many passes as possible to wrestle control of the game and build from there. That was exactly what they did in Lisbon on Tuesday night, and with Rico Lewis, Mateo Kovacic, Bernardo and Gundogan, they have players who are very accomplished at keeping the ball.

The problem is that those players are not especially athletic when it comes to winning the ball back or even chasing it back, and that was also evident against Sporting, leaving the defence — missing Lewis because he was pushed up from right-back — exposed.

That is why Tuesday’s game was a curious one. City played well but were also well beaten. In another sense, it was easy to explain: they played well with the ball, did not take their chances and were weak on the break. Fulham, Wolves and Bournemouth, as well as Spurs in the Carabao Cup, have been able to exploit opportunities on transitions.

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Those issues are exacerbated when those charged with keeping safe control of the ball start to give it away easily, which has also been happening for a while now. Gundogan has yet to rediscover his best form since returning in the summer, Lewis is at times imprecise and Kovacic — the main fulcrum of the team in Rodri’s absence — embodies City’s recent form in that he does many things well within matches but can be very easily beaten, and fail to recover, as Sporting’s second goal highlighted.

(Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

This trend has had some fans crying out for a different approach, which results in something of a vicious circle. Guardiola’s solution to these problems is more passes, more control, and he has a sound supporting argument: if City are vulnerable to fast breaks, then why not try to limit them as much as possible?

Some will argue that if the fast breaks are not being limited, why don’t the team fight fire with fire and try to be a bit more direct and play with more pace in the middle? That is a debate for another day but, in short, when most teams sit deep against City and do not allow them space to play, there is not really anywhere to break into.

The shorter and blunter answer is that we already know that Guardiola just will not consider it.

Lack of goals

This is quite the statement about the Premier League’s second-highest scorers (behind Spurs) but they do seem to be lacking goals, which is something that Guardiola acknowledged on Tuesday. “We have to do a lot to score,” he said.

The thing about the start of the season, when, in fairness, City looked very good without Rodri, was that Erling Haaland was breaking records left, right and centre, so very few people noticed that hardly anybody else was scoring, or needed to score.

John Stones has recorded some important last-gasp strikes, Josko Gvardiol is doing his bit from the back and Kovacic has contributed — but too often in matches, there is a lack of bite in the final third, which was the case on Tuesday night. And when there’s the frailty in midfield mentioned in the previous section, it adds up to the kind of problems we are seeing.

Haaland has failed to score in six of his last 10 appearances for City in all competitions (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

On the wings, City have players who are superb in bringing the ball up to and into the box — but who lack an end product inside it. In fairness to Savinho, he could have had three excellent assists against Southampton only for others to squander the chances, and the Brazilian has started his City career well but at the moment he is not a goal threat — and neither is Doku.

Grealish is out of the picture again but, by his own admission, has never been a goalscorer, while Matheus Nunes is playing well of late on the left wing but rarely brings goals.

City have scored four times from corners in the Premier League this season, which is more than any other team, although they have also taken the most: 98. Their conversion rate from corners is the sixth-best in the league, which is respectable, but four goals from 98 corners ties into the idea that they have to do a lot to score, especially when rivals such as Arsenal spend so much time and effort on set plays.

It does feel like City are in a gloomy place at the moment, but that comment from Bernardo is reminiscent of a similarly worrying message from Gundogan, 18 months ago. “I feel like something is missing, something’s off,” he said in January 2023. “At the minute, there’s a special recipe missing — performances, the desire and hunger is not as in recent years.” And that season ended pretty well.

It would be a stretch to suggest another treble is around the corner but that Gundogan quote should help to put things into perspective. The best way for City to do that is to put things right against Brighton on Saturday evening.

With Tottenham and Liverpool coming up after the November international break, City are going to need to tighten up in defence and midfield and start taking some more chances when they arrive.

It’s rare for a mini-crisis to develop into a major problem at City, but this is a side who are more vulnerable than we’ve seen them for some time.

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(Top photo: Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)